2 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



. blackc/DCk: loves the unreclaimed swamp and the 

 *ftirctfeii** r or alder glen; and the red grouse 

 ' '/Haunts .flje moor and the barren heath, retreat- 

 ing invariably before the progress of cultivation. 

 Even the quail would seem to prefer the compa- 

 ratively slovenly mode of tillage pursued through- 

 out the greater part of Ireland, to the refined 

 system of husbandry now carried on in England.* 

 It is indeed a remarkable fact, that for the last 

 fifty years these birds have been gradually dimi- 

 nishing in the latter country ; and, apparently from 

 an opposite cause, have been steadily increasing 

 in the sister island. I have myself found them 

 far more numerous during the winter on the half 

 reclaimed arable grounds, in the immediate vici- 

 nity of the great bogs, which had produced a 

 scanty and precarious crop of oats, than in the large, 

 well-fenced, and thoroughly drained wheat-fields. 

 But the partridge is par excellence the game of 

 the farm, and, ceteris paribus, the finer the crops 

 of cereal grain and the higher the turnips, the 

 larger and more numerous will be the covies 

 found in such districts. 



Yet there are certain recent refinements in 

 agriculture that are decidedly injurious to the 

 welfare of this bird, and others which must be 

 earnestly deprecated by the sportsman. The 



* Thompson's ' Natural History of Ireland.' 



